Flood insurance for businesses: Government ‘needs to do more’

June 21, 2017 12:09 pm

We wrote back in December about a new scheme to provide businesses with affordable flood insurance. Launched by the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA), it was put together to overcome the fact that the Flood Re scheme for affordable flood cover didn’t cover the commercial sector.

Last week, BIBA presented its scheme to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Flood Prevention. During the presentation, it also focused on how more needs to be carried out by Government to support this initiative – particularly around showing a greater commitment to flood resilience measures.

BIBA is arguing that it is going to be challenging for its members to keep the cost of flood insurance affordable for high-risk commercial properties which have been previously flooded, which haven’t had flood-resilient repairs, or are in an area where the Environment Agency hasn’t resolved the cause of the flood.

BIBA is calling on the Government to carry out three key steps:

Introduce an accreditation scheme for flood defence measures, such as a universal kite mark. This would provide underwriters with assistance when rating flood risk.

Increase the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) budget for defence and maintenance work.

Roll out a wider and more accessible system of resilience grants for small businesses: in particular, to make them available from a single central source rather than from local authorities.

We hope this isn’t the first sign of issues with the scheme. We will as always keep you informed of any developments.